The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1887-05-25
A sHoP-GIRLs, HOTEL.
How Three Plucky shop Girls Established
a Home for Seventy Other Girls.
philadelphia Evening Telegraph
the failure Of Stewart

Philadelphia Evening Telegraph
Notwithstanding the failure of Stewards
Hotel for women, it appears that there is
now in successful operation in New York
City an institution of that kind which
might well be copied in other cities. 1t
was started, and is now carried on by
three shop girls, whose father died, leaving
them $500 each. They went to the city
and into store where their wages were
not sufficient to feed and cloth them with
out encroaching on their capital. Finally
the idea occurred to one OF them that they
might benefit themselves and other girls
in like positions by starting a hotel espec-
tally for them. We quote from the story
as told by the most active of the energetic
trio:
There were 7OOwomen about the estab-
lishment where / worked, and we talked
the matter up mornings and nights with
every one that we knew. There were
plenty OF girls who lived at home with
their parents, butt we found fifty or more
who jumped at the chance we offered them
and were continually urging us to go ahead
with the scheme. Finally we began house
hunting. We were staggered by the city
rents, as matter of course, and more than
once gave up the whole plan in despair.
We had staked our all on a desperate
chance, and the longer We looked at it the
more certain appeared the prospect of our
loss. 1t was a woman of whom we hired
the place, and she put the figures as low as
she could afford, and promised US con-
sideration in any difficulty, so long as
slere seemed chance in our fual
success. There WASN'T money enough left
to furnish very extensively, but we got to-
gether the needfuls for the kitchen and the
dining-room and put up as many beds as
our last lingering dollars would buy. The
girls who had promised to board were
eager to come, and most of them had
woman's knick-knacks of one sort or an.
other-tables or chairs or pictures or bits
of fancy work-that frightened up the
bare place wonderfully and made it look
from the first week almost like home. 1t
was because it felt like home that we did
not fail. There were fifty of us the day the
house opened, and the dining-room and
the big sitting-room and the hallway
opened running over with a flock of de-
lighted children. To have a house
to themselves where they could do
as they pleased was luxury that
went to their hearts. They ran upstairs
and down stairs, and the homelier nook
or corner was the better they liked it. 1t
was a camping-out frolic, and plcnics were
rare enough with them all. They laughed
because / forgot towels in ordering the
linen, and they laughed when the milk
man went by without leaving the milk.
They sat up till past midnight sewing the
long seams Of the sheets They unpacked
their trunks and settled the furniture and
hustled about in that first week of con-
fusion, in the firm conviction that the
whole experiment was the most delightful
of Jokes that had ever exploded in their
prosaic lives. Nothing discouraged them
and nothing daunted them. No matter
what went wrong. they were determined to
be pleased and to find in every mishap only
the material for a jsst. L put the board
as low as / dared, after l had calcu-
lated the rent and the coal, the gas and
the table bills. left the store, of course.
and my sisters did the same. The three OF
rs undertook to manage the house, and
once things got into running order we
found no great difficulty with the scheme.
/ interviewed the grocer and the butcher
and the fish dealer, and have been expert
mentiDg from the start with simple meals
of wholesome variety and material.
Seventy boardera was the utmost number